The Road Less Travelled
by thebicolouredhydra
Summary: How do you know if you're headed in the wrong direction until you're far down the path you have chosen?


White. Perhaps a very, very pale ivory. A ghost of bone, maybe. And at first, smooth to the touch. But, if you held the card just so, flowers. Graceful. Understated. Subtle. Pauling could appreciate that. However, considering who had sent it, not terribly surprising. The Aberlours were known for their taste and style, and their youngest daughter was no exception to that. Even in high school, Faye had evinced an incredibly cultured eye. At the time, it had seem wasted. A lily trying to grow in the parched and barren scratch of teenage disinterest. What possible artistry was there in maths, geography, or phys ed? What beauty in economics, history or social studies that wasn't outweighed by cruel, jagged-edged reality? Their school had had no art classes, and for all Pauling knew, that was still the case. Nevertheless, Faye had held on through the drudgery and the grey and the stricture of it all to come through the other side and bloom. Tenacity rewarded.

The lettering was simple, yet with an elegant arc to it. Well-chosen - Faye could do no less - but the meaning behind the words was troubling. And Pauling still hadn't decided what she was going to do. The pad of her thumb slid along the surface of the card, feeling the dips and rises of the embossed flowers.

She shouldn't have been caught unawares. It was… bad for concentration, and it spoke even worse of her observation skills. Of course it had been ten years. She could hardly lie and think it had seemed like only yesterday. Years passed. That's what they did.

Pauling tilted the card back and forth slightly between her hands. If she held it right in front of her face in order to block out everything else, maybe she could force the decision she'd been wriggling away from all day.

"A birthday card?"

The white rectangle rotated down in Pauling's hands to uncover the source of the quiet inquiry. The blue-shifted light thrown from the screens behind her threw a halo around the Administrator's silhouette as she stood in the doorway between the observation room and Pauling's small office. The spark of orange and wraith-like smoke marked the ever-present cigarette held between long fingers that Pauling couldn't see.

The Administrator would have known that it wasn't a birthday card. Very little ever escaped her attention because she never let it, but from time to time, she would approach a subject in such a manner that would pretend she didn't already know the answers to her questions. Pauling had never been able to discern if it was a game her employer played, a way to string someone along by giving them the impression that they still held kept secrets. After all, a stolen code is far more useful than a broken one. She had learned that at the Administrator's elbow very quickly.

"An invite." The thick card made a short, snapping sound against the polished wood as Pauling placed it aside.

"An unwelcome one." A statement this time, the ingenuous inquiry tack dropped at Pauling's matter-of-fact response. Perhaps the Administrator had seen her uncertain expression.

"Right now, it is."

"And why is that?"

Pauling had been asking herself that question as well. And was still trying to find the answer.

"I might not like what I find there."

The glowing circle of slow-burning tobacco flared briefly, and exhaled breath transformed into a living, twisting entity that rose ever upwards.

"What you find there, or what you'll find in yourself?"

An imperceptible shrug. "Is there a difference?"

The Administrator rolled the cigarette between her fingers before taking another inhale. "You should go. And find out."

So Pauling did.

* * *

Faye had been there. Of course. It had been strange to see her. Pauling didn't know what she had expected. Perhaps nothing, so no matter what she had seen or heard, she would have been surprised. There was a peculiar, floating sensation when she had spied Faye's long, pale blonde hair to one side of the hall, a blurring of vision that overlaid the woman over the girl that Pauling had known, placing her both in the past and in the now simultaneously, and just for a heartbeat.

She had waited until Faye was alone, away from the fixed smiles and firm handshakes and creased wallet photos of babies and searching eyes with their underlying, insidious judgements and comparisons. Whilst Faye had never been amongst the most popular of her classmates, she had been regarded quite well by most. A solid student. Diligent. Liked by the teachers, which was always significant. She had managed to avoid the mistrust and whispers that had followed Pauling. Mistrust and whispers that Faye had fastidiously ignored. Pauling had been grateful for that… still was, in fact. Her school life would have been that much more intolerable otherwise.

"I'd hoped you'd be here," Faye whispered as she folded Pauling in a warm embrace. She still smelled the same, and for a moment, Pauling gripped her tight and shut her eyes to stop the unexpected tears that threatened to surge.

"I almost wasn't," Pauling admitted, finally releasing her hold.

Faye's hands squeezed her upper arms. "That could easily have been two of us," she confided. A sigh. "But then, I don't think it would have been good form for me not to be here. I was the one who organised this wretched thing, after all." She swiped a couple of fluted glasses from the linen-covered table at her side and pressed one of them into Pauling's hand. "Cheers." She downed the champagne in one smooth hit.

Pauling let her own glass sit in her hand. She wasn't much of a drinker.

"Why _did_ you organise it?" A necessary, if rude-sounding question, and she tried to take the sting out of it with a slight smile.

Faye set the empty glass back down on the table, the base making a soft clump that could just be heard over the chatter of old friends meeting, of old enemies greeting politely, if stiffly, of exclamations of surprise and raucous reminiscences of days long gone now.

"Because I wasn't sure that anyone else would."

Pauling raised one eyebrow at that.

"There were some things I needed to know."

She heard the simple truth in that statement, and although she wanted to ask what those things were, she bit her tongue. Curiosity moulded into forbearance. Yes, she had learned many things over the years.

"I see George Nesbitt has gotten fat," Pauling noted rather waspishly, and took a delicate sip from her glass; more as punctuation to her statement than any desire for the champagne itself. If she'd had a cigarette, she would have taken an elegant, insouciant drag on it, but she was even less of a smoker than she was a drinker, and probably would have started coughing and ruined the moment.

"Are you going to start another fight?" Faye asked, curious. "Only I'd like to take bets this time around." She laughed as Pauling shot her a look. "I don't think anyone'd bet against you, though!"

"I could still take him," the shorter woman declared, a little too sharply.

"I have no doubt," Faye replied, an extended arm scooping Pauling farther down the hall and away from snooping ears. "Where did you go, little bird? I looked for you after you graduated college, but you vanished."

Little bird. Faye used to call her that when they were girls. Pauling wasn't sure why. Their heights were not dissimilar, and she had never considered herself especially avian in looks or manner. But Faye was not the only one who thought of her that way, but he at least was large enough to legitimately refer to her as a little bird. Not that he knew that _she_ knew what he called her. He'd never said it to her face. Spy had been the one to tell her. _Stali korolek_… the steel wren.

"I found a job." Pauling shrugged slightly. What more could she say? Seriously, what more _could_ she say without getting herself… well… in trouble.

"Is it a good job?" Faye's eyes were locked keenly on hers, watching her closely. "Do you like it?"

There was an almost audible click inside Pauling's head: the cocking of a trigger. And she realised that this was the question of which she had been most afraid. She blinked a few times, a feeling in her stomach that startled her, like ants falling on sugar: uncertainty.

"I don't know."

Faye nodded, as if this had been the answer she had expected. This scared Pauling even more, so she twisted and deflected as best she could, as quickly as she could.

"And you? Where has ten long years taken you?"

"Into paper," said Faye, her graceful fingers threading a wave down through the air and across the hall at a stick-thin woman that wore the stretched and tanned face of Jessica Whitehouse - class bitch. "I find myself the largest manufacturer and distributor of paper supplies in the south west." She glanced down at Pauling. "Not very glamorous. But lucrative."

"Your parents must be proud," said Pauling, grabbing for the cliché and then instantly regretting it.

Faye snorted. "Far from it. They had other plans for me, but I decided that if was going to follow any plans, they'd be mine." She lowered her voice to a theatrical whisper. "I don't think they were very pleased about _that_!"

They giggled, and the years fell away, and they were girls again. For a brief moment. And then it was gone. And something inside Pauling ached because of it.

"Is it good work? Do you _like_ it?"

Faye took a long time to answer, and at first, Pauling thought that perhaps her friend hadn't heard her questions turned about and aimed back at her. So she took another tentative sip of her champagne and catalogued the changed faces around her.

"Yes, I believe I do."

"You sound surprised." And Faye had.

"I didn't know until now. That's why I needed to do this." There was a crease between Faye's brows, a distant look in her eyes. "We need markers in our lives to measure ourselves against. To see how far we've come."

"A map?"

Faye's eyes refocused. She considered Pauling's words. "Perhaps. Our lives are a terrain worth fighting over. At least, I've always believed it so."

They parted not long after. There were promises to keep in touch, a tasteful business card pressed into Pauling's hand. A hug and melancholy smiles that said they both knew it'd be another ten years, if not longer. If at all.

But Pauling thought on Faye's words as she parried the inevitable questions and searching, assessing gazes of her old classmates, some of whom surprised her. George Nesbitt seemed to have forgotten that she had punched him and broken his nose all those years ago. Or perhaps he had remembered and had come to understand why she'd done it. Pauling liked to think that was the case, but neither of them were willing to bring it up. Jessica Whitehouse did, but then she'd always been a cow with an unerring targeting system and a flagrant disregard for social setting.

It wasn't just Faye's words that she ruminated on. The repeated, formulaic inquiries proved as valuable as the unexpected, shrewd interrogations. Each answer Pauling gave marked a spot on that invisible map of her life; signposts that told her where she had been, where she was, and where she might be headed.

Yes, she had graduated from college. A degree in business management. She recalled the impossibly blue sky at commencement, the smile of her father just months before he died, and the flash of purple beyond the back row.

Yes, she'd been headhunted. Straight out of college, too. She remembered again the fussy-looking, balding man who'd personally delivered the letter requesting her attendance to an interview for a job she'd never applied for. He'd refused to shake her hand, or rather had ignored it. That had always bothered her.

Yes, she had a job. In real estate acquisitions. She recognised the looks of confusion because she had felt the same way as she'd stood in that dark room with its countless eyes that never blinked at the smoke that trailed ever upwards and outwards, answering questions that had sounded both deceptively simple and treacherously deep.

There was a click in her head.

Yes, she was happy. She believed she was.

* * *

The Administrator didn't take her eyes off the screens in front of her as Pauling approached the high-backed chair. One hand with its purple-tipped nails rested at the older woman's chin, a crease between her sharply defined brows. Something was troubling her. And for something to trouble the Administrator, it must be of some significance. Pauling would learn of it, or she would not - that was for the Administrator to decide and not for Pauling to ask.

"How was your reunion?"

"Like being back at school," Pauling replied, frowning slightly at the two screens that the Administrator's steely gaze was flicking between. One showed a downward angle on the Heavy, polishing his precious mini-gun in the armory, as he always did at this late hour. The other was of Medic in his office, behind a desk of papers, the fingers of one hand threaded through his short, dark hair so that his forehead rested in the palm; a pen in his other hand that wasn't moving along the page it was pressed against. A frozen image? It seemed an oddly innocuous moment for the Administrator to focus on.

"What did you find?"

"That some people found what they were looking for."

"Were they disappointed?"

Pauling sighed, considering the question carefully. "Hard to know, really. I think a few of them are struggling to avoid realising that they are. Others seem… accustomed to their choices."

"Social expectation is a dreadful thing, Pauling. Never forget that."

Surprise pulled the younger woman's eyes from the screen to her employer. Was it her imagination, or was there sadness in the Administrator's voice? No. Tiredness, surely. Pauling had never known the Administrator to be one that entertained melancholy. She returned her attention to the screens and realised that the image of Medic hadn't been a still one after all. The dark blot bleeding from the nib of his pen hadn't been immediately obvious, but she could see it now, slowly bruising the stark white of the empty page under his hand. BLU. Almost certainly.

"They asked me if I had a man in my life."

Pauling wasn't sure who was more startled at her statement. It wasn't one she had intended to make, but it had popped out before she'd been conscious it had been lurking just behind her awareness, waiting to spring forth like an embarrassing cough.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Administrator shift her weight from one elbow to the other, leaning away from Pauling to look up at her, eyebrows raised.

"They all did." Pauling realised that was what annoyed her the most, and if truth be told, she sounded a little petulant about it.

The Administrator lifted her half-consumed cigarette to her lips, studying her assistant with narrowed eyes. "And what did you tell them?"

Pauling pursed her lips. "That I had eighteen of them. They seemed reluctant to ask anything further after that."

There was a brief pause before the Administrator tipped her head back and laughed, loud and long, in her husky voice. There was no malice in it. Just honest, unfettered amusement, and for a fleeting moment, Pauling realised that the weight of her employer's responsibilities lay heavier on those angular shoulders than she'd known.

"That's my girl!" A cool hand patted hers. And she did sound genuinely pleased. Pauling attempted, and failed, to dampen a surge of pride. Her employer's opinion matter greatly to her. It hadn't been until the reunion that she'd realised just how much.

She knew there'd be a day when more would be required of her, something that went beyond the everyday headaches of human resource management, something that couldn't be fixed with steely determination and a gun and no questions asked because she made sure of it. There'd be a time when she'd be solely responsible for lives other than her own, lives that had become part of hers.

Scout, who flirted and postured and demanded her attention whenever he could, near insufferable in his persistence but strangely sweet in his dedication and open-hearted nature. He always remembered her birthday. She had no idea how he'd discovered the date but he always left something for her outside the door to her office that was surprisingly tasteful. Surprising until she realised that he asked his mother to choose it, trusting in her judgement and knowing full well that his would be inadequate. She appreciated his gifts no less for that.

Soldier, who was brash and loud and caused all manner of problems with his gung-ho attitude and staunch beliefs and hair-trigger pugnacity, but was as loyal as a hound and could dance like Fred Astaire. She'd seen it first hand one New Year's Eve at the pitiful excuse for a bar in town, seen the way the women all waited for the chance for him to take their hand and sweep them into that age-old courting ritual that so few knew the language of any more. She had wondered what it would be like to dance with him but her courage had failed her before he'd even known she was there.

Pyro. Dear, sweet, mad Pyro who was forever lost to them in a world only they understood, whose actions were both terrifying and innocent, who could burn the flesh from another as easily as they could rejoice in the sheer joy of a child's game or lavish affection on whoever was close to them. Sometimes she could see the ragged desperation that leaked out from behind those black, blank eyes, the hungry need to connect across a vast chasm that circumstance had placed between them and the rest of humanity, and she'd remember who Pyro had been, and mourned the loss.

Demo, whose alcoholism was both a blessing and a curse to him, a bone-deep reliance on drink that allowed him to do what he needed to do, no matter how much it pained him, just as it allowed him to forget what he had done. But it could never hide the gentleness at the core of him, the indefatigable sunniness of disposition and unfeigned hurt he felt whenever he'd thought he'd failed. He always seemed genuinely pleased to see her, even after he'd left a trail of mischief-induced destruction through the base.

Engineer, who reminded her of her father in many ways that caused her both grief and solace. An old-fashioned southern gentleman with the mind of a genius, the dogged determination of a pioneer and the frighteningly tenacious patience of the sorely wronged. There was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to, no problem he couldn't overcome. She liked his assuredness and calmness amidst the explosive and chaotic day-to-day life they shared, and could always count on his level-headed nature. The rock crushed under enormous pressure, that still held firm and unbroken.

Heavy, who was so tall and large and yet so deferential around her, almost timid. At times, he seemed afraid if she got too close to him and would edge back and away, a giant bear shying from a mouse. Or a bird. None would doubt his capacity as a fighter: a relentless, powerful, living machine that held death in his grasp, that could roll over everything in his path and not even pause. Harder to spot was the contemplative, far-sighted thinker - a scholar, if his records were to be believed, and Pauling did - who was as destructive and impassable on a chessboard as he was on the battlefield.

Medic, who slid along the razor-thin line that separated mastery from madness, the contradiction that killed and healed with the same hands. A man as devoted and protective of his birds as he was of his team-mates, and heaven help whoever got between he and they. Sometimes Pauling would catch him looking at her, an expression on his face she'd been unable to decipher but that always brought a suspicious heat to her cheeks. She knew where his interest really lay, though. It was fascinating to see both the realisation of it, and the denial, and the only difference was in the colour he wore.

Sniper, who bore loneliness with a stoic ease and shoulder-shrugging acceptance that Pauling found heartbreaking. The sense of waiting for something that might never arrive was almost palpable around him, a bone-deep solitude that was paradoxically relieved when he escaped the suffocation of company and headed for wide open spaces and endless skies. He bore scars from both man and beast but it was the strike on his heart that never healed, a merciless cruelty for letting his guard down. But god, he knew some filthy jokes and she loved to listen to his voice when he spoke. All too rarely.

Spy, whose eyes were sharper than the edge of his blade, whose eyes could seem older and more tired and more cynical than anyone could be punished with. There was no facade he couldn't penetrate, no defense he couldn't slip through, no mind he couldn't fool. A man who lost himself and sacrificed who he was with such alarming frequency and fluid ease that Pauling wondered if he remembered who he used to be any more. A man who hid an artist's hands under calfskin and permitted only one chink in his armour, a forbidden risk that gave him the strength to believe there was more for him to survive for than there was to die for.

They all mattered to her, and Pauling knew that her job was more than just a place she spent twelve hours a day in. It was a path that she had been steered towards, but one she had chosen to take. One she had decided to keep walking along. Not for her the other paths, the ones that would take her to marriage and children, the ones that would take her to safety and convention, the ones that would take her to an easier life she knew she'd regret.

That small, white card had been a more important signpost than she had realised, a mark on the map of her life that she'd look back on and know: that was where I stepped forward and onward. To whatever end.


End file.
